Newsletter

SLOW NEWS DAY

As much as 14 regional schools in Holland will organise events in the week of November 19 till November 24, by the name of ROC(k) against AIDS.With events such as the Freddie’s Dinners and Freddie’s Dance Parties, all in memory of Queensinger Freddie Mercury, hopefully lots of money will be raised in benefit of the Dutch Aids Foundation. Pupils of all participating schools will organise the events themselves, as a learning project. Several schools will organise the dinners and all other facilities that have to do with this. Often the pupils even take care of all the publicity that the events demand.

The money will be raised by selling tables for the dinners. Apart from that, the pupils will search for sponsors and they try to find volunteers for the musical aspect of the evenings. All profits of ROC(k) Against Aids will be donated to the Dutch Aids Foundation. Last year, this was as much as 35.000 euro’s!

This years’ money will be used by the Aids Foundation and 3 of their partners for a large-scale ‘resistency project’. In 25 countries in Asia and Africa, a group of about 4000 HIV-positive people will be monitored for 5 years. The mutations or changes of the HIV-virus, which lead to resistency, will be mapped. This is very important, because AIDS-medication will no longer work if the virus becomes resistent, which means: if the virus changes so much, that medication will stop working and the virus can spread widely. Never before an investigation like this has been done on such a large scale.

The main goal of the Aids Foundation is to take care of the fact that everyone has access to prevention, treatment, care and support. Apart from that the Aids Foundation is doing scientific research and therefore helps us to learn more about Aids. Finally, the Aids Foundation supports new developments which may lead to new and better treatments.

Peter Freestone supports this initiative and will personally attend one of the events. Freestone was Mercury’s personal assistant until he died. Freddie Mercury died in 1991 from the consequences of Aids.

More information and a summary of the events and participating ROC’s can be found at www.freddiesdinner.nl. More information on the activities of the Aids Foundation can be found at www.aidsfonds.nl.

For any other questions and/or information please contact Martin Huizinga, who supervises the project.